Start-Up Sees New Frontier in Mining: Asteroids in Space

By

Amir Efrati

Updated April 24, 2012 10:18 a.m. ET

The riddle of the space asteroid start-up has been solved.

On Tuesday, Planetary Resources Inc., whose mission has been shrouded in secrecy, will outline in Seattle its plan to send an unmanned spacecraft to an asteroid and mine it for valuable metals and water that could be used in further space exploration or returned to earth.

Chris Lewicki, former NASA Mars mission manager, is Planetary's president and chief engineer

Source: the company

Images: Mining Asteroids

A company rendering of the Leo space telescope it plans to use to help assess asteroids. Planetary Resources

The company, backed by several billionaires, is working to recruit engineering and mission-planning expertise and allow private companies to bid to help it launch the spacecraft, said John S. Lewis, a University of Arizona planetary-science professor who said he is an adviser to Planetary.

Planetary last week said it would launch on Tuesday an effort to "overlay two critical sectors—space exploration and natural resources—to add trillions of dollars to the global GDP" and "help ensure humanity's prosperity." The company said it is backed by Google Inc. co-founder Larry Page, Hollywood director James Cameron and space-exploration proponents such as Peter Diamandis, a co-founder of Planetary who has publicly discussed his goal to become an asteroid miner.

Spokeswomen for Planetary declined to comment.

Mr. Lewis, whose 1997 book, "Mining the Sky," helped popularize the idea of extracting natural resources from asteroids, said Planetary's president already owns a small firm that builds spacecraft.

Despite the early financial support from wealthy investors and the backing of well-known space-exploration researchers, Planetary Resources faces many technical questions and uncertainties about costs and the technology required to extract materials from asteroids.

Scientists have said such a pursuit could cost hundreds of millions of dollars at least.

The 70-year-old Mr. Lewis said the technical requirements for sending an unmanned mission to an asteroid near Earth is "easier than landing on the moon because there is almost no gravity" to contend with on asteroids.

Scientists, including some researchers from National Aeronautics and Space Administration, have said they believe mining asteroids is crucial to future space exploration. Mr. Lewis said asteroids could yield "astronomical quantities" of minerals such as iron and nickel that could be used to build components for housing space explorers, and supply water for a fuel source.

"We could cut the umbilical cord that ties us to Earth," he said.

ENLARGE

Space mining has captivated Hollywood. Director James Cameron is a backer of the new venture.
European Pressphoto Agency

Earlier

In addition, studying asteroids could help humans figure out methods to prevent large ones from colliding with Earth, he said.

Rather than send spacecraft to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, Mr. Lewis said, a better way to reach an asteroid is to target those that come close to earth's orbit.

Separately, numerous scientists, including some at NASA, earlier this month published a study that said by 2025, humans could use robotic spacecraft to capture a 500-ton asteroid seven meters in diameter and bring it into orbit around the moon so that it could be explored and mined.

NASA currently is working on an unmanned mission called OSIRIS-Rex that would launch in 2016, land on an asteroid, study it, and bring a tiny amount of it back to earth by 2023. But Mr. Lewis said that isn't enough and that it has been painfully frustrating to see the "slowness of progress" being made by NASA on the topic.

Corrections & Amplifications Planetary Resources Inc. intends on Tuesday to outline its plan to send an unmanned spacecraft to an asteroid and mine it for valuable metals and water that could be used in further space exploration or returned to earth. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said part of the aim of Planetary Resources would be to convince governments that the technology exists to snare an asteroid and pursue space mining in the near future at a relatively low cost.

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